Crank Caverns.

The small village of Crank close to Rainford in Merseyside is not the sort of place where you would expect to encounter a vast underground man made cave system, however this little known strange place does exist and many legends are attached to this disturbing place.

Being an outsider to the area it was difficult to locate the caves, and as the tourist information centre in St Helens seems to have gone ex directory I nearly gave up the quest, if it wasn’t for Pete Morris from Enviromental Protection who kindly e-mailed me directions to the caves I probably wouldn’t have found them. I used my sat nav which took me to Chapel View road in Crank (WA117SJ) where I parked my car, I then walked back up the hill for about 50 yards to a 90 degree bend in the road, on this bend there is a dirt track that leads across the fields for about a quarter of a mile, eventually you will come to two trees where you follow the track to the left and it will lead you to a wood where the caves are located.

The photograph on the right shows the track which I followed from Crank and leads to the wood where the Crank Caverns can be found.

Rather than enter the wood through the drive way which seems to lead to a private house I followed the path which skirted to the right of the wood and which led to an opening and a path which took me down into the small wood, strange undulations can be found here which I presume came about from the mining which took place here back in 1730 and was known as Rainford Delph Quarry.

As the wood is quite small it didn’t take me long to come across the entrance to the caves, the caves came into existence because rather than quarry the stone it was decided to mine it instead which created the many tunnels and shafts that can be found here. Mining ceased back in 1865 and since then the area has been used as a game reserve and also an ammuntion storage facility during the Second World War.

As the caves are prone to collapse in certain sections I decided not to enter the caves to any great extent, I took a series of photographs close to the entrance of the caverns and I think it would be unwise to enter them on your own and without the relevant equipment.

There are many legends attached to these caves so I will do my best to reproduce them here the first one concerns an account of children who went missing here back in the 18th century and is as follows:  Four children decided to explore the sandstone caverns in the area and vanished. One child survived and told a terrifying tale about small old men with beards who killed his three friends and chased him. The petrified child stumbled over human bones in the caves and finally managed to scramble through an opening to the surface as a hand was grabbing at his ankle. The authorities were concerned because a number of people had gone missing in the area near the cave entrances. Two heavily armed soldiers descended into the caverns with torches and claimed that they not only found a heap of human bones, they also found the ruins of an ancient church of some unknown denomination. The interior of the church was lit by three large candles and grotesque gargoyles formed part of an altar. Throughout the exploration of the underground, the soldiers said they felt as if they were being watched, and also heard voices speaking in an unknown language. One report said that a child’s head was found in a cave, along with evidence of cannibalism. After a second investigation, the caves either collapsed or gunpowder was used to seal them, and so the riddle of the underground church of Crank Caverns remains unsolved.

I came across other accounts from people who have a knowledge of the cave system, some claim that as well as being man made there are parts of it which are natural, some claim that parts of the extensive system remain unexplored, the following are accounts which I have reproduced here:The caverns are reputed to be haunted, though to date no extensive paranormal investigation has been carried out. In 1997, the Canadian documentary show “Ghost Hunters – Bust ‘Em Up!” taped an episode titled “Jones’n for Jellies”. The show presented what appeared to be sporadic images of ghosts purported to be that of deceased weatherman Jon Andrew who was said to have fallen into one of the crevasses after a bout with local legend “The Trollcombe” in 1943.

The following comments were taken off a forum and relate to the caves:

he claimed that some scouts went down the caverns for a look around and at the end of the day one of the scouts had not come back out………and we was taking all of this in and waited with bated breath for more of the what he was telling us…anyway he told us that they had to call out the cave rescue people to try and find the boy…..after a long search they found him or what was left of him(this guy was starting to scare us a little as we had just come out of the caves ourselves )he said that the boy was partly eaten and that the parents of the child wanted it all kept secret so that they could give him a peaceful burial and that they did not want the papers to get hold of it..he looked at the time that he meant it….good stuff…… i used to go there in the seventies with my brother and friends it was always cold down there as i can remember, i also heard another tale about tunnels which funny enough fits in with the stone coming from crank to build holy cross! and the tale is that convicted prisoners who were to be hung went through a tunnel under the town hall! up too crank caverns too the big three trees on the public footpath…i think it is the middle tree were they was hung and on the lower branch you can see where the rope was tied, it also has the names of people hung there! truth or myth print the myth!I have photos of 3 of the maps which are not totally clear but you can just about make them out, and also photos of each of the marked entrances on the maps + the ones leading to the lake, mirror cavern and church.this is the “guy with the maps”. its about time i came clean, all maps i have led on to the underground church, lake, mirror cavern, twister tunnel and so on. i have seen all of these places with my own eyes after being guided when i was about 8, i’m 22 now. the church looks now like nothing more than a crumbling pile of stone, the tunnels and paths leading to it are pretty dangerous though. all of the tunnels leading to these places are very easily accessible but are covered by rocks and metal sheets. if you know what you are looking for then you will not have a problem. only very few people have been this far in lately and my self and the guide created a system so only the right people can find out. of course i dont expect anyone to believe this, but it seems that there are some genuinely interested people. ask yourself one question, if a cave is so dangerous, would you make a one time effort and block the entrances or spend countless time and effort, not to mention money, by constantly repairing and replacing gates etc. if you want to know who i am, you can find me down at crank/haysarm caverns very often, just get talking to the right person and i’ll be more than happy to copy out the tunnel maps, but only for the right people.

Has anyone ever seen the wandering monk in the cavern next to the mousey ?I saw this when I was about 15, myself and a friend Norman were digging out what we thought was the entrance at the back of this cavern when we saw (and felt) a figure move past us. This is said to be the ghost of Sir Edmond Arrowsmith, who’s Hand is still kept in a church around the Wigan area and said to have healing powers. Why this ghost would be haunting the Caverns though i don’t know.I have spoken to people who know of this but none who have actually seen .The Caverns are said to have tunnels leading to them from some of the buildings in the Village, one use was for the Catholic priests to escape from the Parliamentarians/Cromwell’s soliders.At this time Catholic priests were being killed and were banned from saying mass, so they had to practice mass in private at places such as Birchley Hall, tunnels from the hall are said to lead to the Caverns.I did manage to partly clear the blockage around the tunnel which apparently leads to the “Church Cavern”, but it appears there may still be another fairly large entrance way to this point from somewhere other than the caverns. Once I got around 30ft past the blockage, there was a large Iron gate which appears to have been ripped off the cavern wall in this area. This gate is too heavy for the average person to lift, without even thinking about how they got it down there. This area is fairly new to me as i’ve only seen it on the map before, so I went maybe another 30ft past the gate then turned back. The Church is apparently around another 50-100 feet in from here and the original map states that ropes are needed to get any further, so after considering my brothers suggestion to “jump” for 2 seconds i decided against it.I am planning, one day soon when the weather clears up, to take virtually every piece of equipment I could possibly need down there and not come out until there is no where I’ve not seen.After recently trying to access all of the lower tunnels further inside the mousey I have some interesting information. I only went down there again because curiosity got the better of me and I decided to try to un-block the tunnel which leads to the church (somewhere I hadn’t been before). After spending about half an hour moving rocks down there, I sat off for a rest near a large formation of rocks and slabs and noticed a large overhang and a ledge leading to a drop down into another chamber (near enough perfectly square room). I managed to get through there fairly quickly and noticed that the room was near enough filled with what looked like broken wooden storage boxes and pieces of old metal. I would estimate that the room is about a mile or so in. What I find really strange is there is no mention of it at all on the maps that I have. When I went down there, I only took equipment for un-blocking and lighting, I am now going to be spending most of my time down there exploring every inch of that place, WITH A CAMERA. This is too exciting not to.First of all, the distance is shown on the maps which I have. Also for a long time, I have studied the shape of the land in the surrounding area, the caverns have 5 levels in total which obviously means the tunnel system will remain underground when you come to a valley etc. I looked at the remaining system and matched it up to the land above and measured outside using local maps. It sounds like this would not be very accurate, however there are “landmark” like points in the tunnels and they are not all little passages which need to be crawled through, most can be accessed by walking. Also the amount of time it took me (just walking) was around 7 hours to reach the furthest point that I can get to.Even just the first 200-300 metres in the tunnels can be easily located by looking at collapses down there and comparing them to large (but sudden) dips in the field.The main caverns are fairly new compared to the main tunnel system which starts at the mousey, Level 1 was for mining-nothing else, although one passage which streches to the 12 yarder does connect with the original level 2 main system. Level 2 was there first, this was a large network of tunnels leading to many known places in the St Helens area including the Stork Hotel Billinge, Lowe House Church, Carrmill area, St Aidens Church Billinge etc. The tunnels also run under a lot of the Pubs in the Billinge area, not all of them have entrances, but i believe the tunnel network under the Billinge arms (George and Dragon) may hide a dark secret, although this is just my opinion. The Stork Inn in the village of Billinge located 2-3 miles from the cave entrance and where one of the tunnels is said to have connected with the cellar some time in the past.There is a story that the Church was once above ground, but due to part of the Cavern’s tunnels collapsing, the Church sunk into the ground and fell inside the Caverns.Also some of them agree that the Caverns are just man made. But they may be a natural formation in parts, or connect to older tunnels from the many coal mines around the area.I used to go there a lot when I was younger. Down the mousey hole, you had to crawl on your belly for 5 mins to get in there. But could then stand up it leads you around in a circle.And there’s tunnels branching off now blocked, but one lad (cavemaster) claims there’s corrugated iron and rubble (which I have seen but because of the rumble feared it may collapse) he says you can dig a little through the rubble and it leads onto other chambers/Caverns etc.the lad on the forum cavemaster (Mark) says he has all the old maps of the Caverns.I remember the first time I visited Crank Caverns. At that time you could still access the underground passages and what a strange place. I got kind of lost in there as some of the original tunnels were blocked and I did three laps of a circular tunnel.By the time I found my way out, two of the three torches that we had taken had gone out. If the third had gone out I would have died. The exit is above head hight and very easy to miss when walking around even with light and no natural light makes it in there.I remember it more because of the bollocking I got from my parents when I got home covered from head to toe in the clay like soil. Just why there would be soil like that in there is in itself unusual as everything else is just slate and there is no clay in the soil in the surrounding areas, just good quality farmland.I have been back there recently and now all underground passages are closed off. This is for public safety, but I think they should be reopened and explored extensively. The surrounding area to the opening looks man made and not very natural at all. There would need to be flowing water to create such a feature and there is none in the area. I know that the locals around Crank do call the police if they see people going to the site. The looks you get from them seem to be one of astonishment. Interesting history about the place though, most of which I didn’t know . The stone coffin is in St. Aidens church yard, and local legend has it that a man was up Billinge Hill when he was attacked by something that was half bat, half snake. Whatever it was it obviously killed him. The caverns themselves have more tales than they do visitors. Some people say they are left over from a mine that was down there, some people say there is a church in there. There was even an article on the BBC website in 2002 about the kids that got murdered down there and how they got chased by small people that spoke in an unknown tongue. After the kids got killed the army went into the caverns and some gates and bars were put into place. Whether they were to keep curious people out or something from down there ‘in’ is another matter. If you look near to Crank you have a place called Billinge. Billinge had one of the only free catholic printing presses in England when the government was out to kill all the catholics. I have been told that there are tunnels that run from St. Marys church grave yard at the bottom of Billinge to the caverns, accessed by an empty stone coffin in the grave yard. There is also supposed to be a tunnel from Sue Ryder nursing home as there is still a priest hole there to this day. I’ve been reading this thread with great interest as I am one of the new owners of The Stork Inn. It’s correct that we do have access to the tunnel system from the underground cellar. At the time of writing I have not yet had chance to explore the tunnels as we have only occupied the building for weeks. If anybody would like to ask any questions about the place feel free to drop me a line, or if you’re local pop-in and i’ll take you into the depths! Underneath Billinge there is an underground stream. 4 houses in a certain road all got big extensions built on them, for free, in the early 80s as they had sunk due to this stream. I think the water runs all the way to the caverns and that the 12 yarder (fishing pond) as it’s know locally is an overflow for this. I have spoken to people that have lived in Billinge for a long time and cannot find any maps of the caverns at all. There are rumours that they exist but mostly I think it is just people trolling forums. I once went deep into the caves with a friend and a member of the council (or so he said, He did have the key to the gate). We did a little trip around the centre caves (the one’s available for access to all the public),  If you go into these caverns on the left and go about 4 steps deep, turn 90 degrees so you are looking straight across the rockface, and you will notice you have a clear view in between all the rocks to the far wall,  on the back wall where this strange circle made by rocks appears you can see the face of a witch. (sorry for the bad explanation). Away from the main cave now and down to the left of them, you enter a large ditch outside with a big cave entrance on your right and a little entrance in front of you, the entrance in front is the one that is locked with the gate. The one to the right can be accessed but doesn’t go too deep. I have heard that the cave on the right people have report seeing images of Monks wandering this cave, I cannot back this up as i didn’t see this unfortunately. The cave with the locked gate has two stories i know off about it, I’ll tell you more about them in a bit, now i’ll tell you about my experience in there.  We met up with the council guy on the arranged time (We got to know him after seeing him there the week before just as he was leaving, and he agreed to show us deep into the cave).  He unlocked the gate and in we went, after about 2 minutes of walking through we came to what i thought was a dead end, but the guy pointed with his torch to a very tight hole at the side which lead deeper.  After squeezing through we entered a large chamber,  we carried on down some more passages and ended up at what i would call a alter.  It was a long square room and at one end was the stone altar built into the cave. I can’t remember much more after this, but we were in there for a good 3-4hours.  On the way back out we entered the chamber again, the guy told us to lead the way and to our terror we couldn’t find the exit. He let us look around the room for about 5 minutes before he laughed and got down on his hands and knees and pointed to the exit which was hidden by a overhang. If he hadn’t have pointed it out we would have never found it. I don’t remember this mans name. Once outside the man told us about the history of the caverns,  Firstly he told us that they we used by monks in the church in billange as an escape route. The church can be seen from just outside the caverns. I don’t know the name of the church, I’ll do some research and get back to you. Secondly he told us about a story that happened not so long ago (Will be about 12-13 years ago now if my memory is right). He told us two young lads entered the caverns and got lost, they had told there parents where they were going and when they didn’t arrive home there parents informed the police. After a couple of days searching the police sealed off the area and removed to body bags from the caverns.  This is were it get strange, they were also reported to have remove 7 more body bags from the caverns,  one of the bags was said to have not been in a body shape but was square. Again I have no evidence to back this up but I’ll research it and get back to you again. Reading these posts about crank caverns stirs a few memories. I think it was summer 74 school hols ,there was a gang of us lads and girls we would go up too crank ,rainford etc and like kids do just explore the surrounding area.Well this particular day we were going to explore the caverns ,so equipped with matches and paper we entered what i think was called the mouse tunnel ,this entrance was to the left of the main larger cave. We had been down there for ten mins when we ran out of matches and we were completely lost ,i remember it was a scorching hot day so we only had t shirts on but it was -5 down there we were ambling around for ages crawling through tunnels , stumbling around in circles it was freezing,i remember my mate saying we had to keep warm so we did exercises too keep us warm. i reckoned we had been down there for about ten hours we were tired and covered in cuts and bruises,we saw a light in the distance it was the cave and mountain rescue team . When we got outside there was police cars ambulances,the doctor who checked us over told us we were lucky to be alive . to top it all off it was reported in the papers and on granada reports got a good walloping off the old man for my silly adventure. I was told by one of the c+r team that these caves extend all the way too billinge .last time i went up too the caves the mouse entrance had been blocked off with metal bars. Hi Arch..Dont want to p!$$ on the thread and spoil all the doubters ,but when i was a kid there were two open caves that ran for over 3 miles. One  “The mousies hole” came to an abrupt end and often flooded due to a stream running across it about a mile in…which at times you really needed to belly crawl to get through…The other was the “blue lagoon” which was a underground lake about 50 meters across which also was around 3 miles in..I believe the stream in the other cave ran off from this lake…I used to frequent both of those caves as a kid and was an excellent caver and took kids in there “for a price” usually a couple of woodbines…Both those caves were early sandstone slate mines and were this was closed off in 1968 due to an accident with young kids getting lost down there…The farmer at the side of the caverns will verify my story as we often dropped in his place to dry off and have a few home brews with him…I think his name was Derek something or other. Crank Caverns were built as a quarry by a man known as Yorkshire charlie. They figured the best and cheapest way to get good stone was to mine it from its seams and follow a good seam and excavate it all, thus explaining the jagged shapes of some of the caves. It is notable that the caves are supported by pillars which shows more of their man made origins. The artesian well that is being mentioned is actually a deep shaft that drops several feet down (some say about 20 however its actually only about 9 so its not really deep) this drops to a bed of gravel in a slight ditch that floods in winter time. over this well is a large bar where ropes would be hung. beyond this is a winding tunnel that follows a seam into more caverns. The main entrance to these caves now is via a billing farm where a narrow system of steps take you down into the tunnel system. Crank Caverns underground lake is said to exist but the mine tunnels do not go near it. It is said there are acres of tunnels under moss bank as similar mining procedures were undertaken here. The entrance to these can be found in clinkham wood. me and my friends recently filmed a mini documentary on the caverns and their suspected ghosts etc, we had some unexplainable stuff. we checked the caves thoroughly to make sure nobody suspicious was there and apart from a man walking his dog nobody came near, how then do we explain knockings that knocked when we asked, footsteps and evp (electronic voice phenomenon)that answer our posed questions. In my opinion the caverns are now haunted, perhaps some is residual energy but satanic symbols are known to attract unkind spirits. hey guys,twas my good friend mark who swam in the lake.he has maps of the caves there is 7 levels.that he has so far he made the maps himself.he has been going down ther for years, he is 20 now.the passage seddon is talkin bout in the main cave is a dead end.the only one that goes somewhere interesting is the gated entrance which me an mark an his brother recently excavated an now there is a hole going under the gate that anyone could squeeze through without much bother.i will try an get a copy of his maps an post them up.he told me a few weeks ago bout another interesting room called the mirror chamber,where 4 some reason the walls are reflective an it is impossible to find your way out unless u use string to mark your trail.any way gotta go. Hello all! Have read this forum with great interest, I have known about the caverns for many years as I live in Rainford, but only in the past couple of years visited them and have seen that the gate and mouse hole have been dug out recently – nice one!! One of my mates, hes about 28 now has been into all of them and spent hours over several years in there – he states “they go a long long way!!!, further than most will risk going”, Another mate of mine has cousin that lives locally on one of the farms, theyve both been down recently! Ill get more info off them, Im trying to persuade them to take me down as I used to do pot holing in yorkshire and have been into several of the gwidir lead mines in wales – theyre massive you could walk miles in there! – Ive even got survey maps of these! I know that locals petitioned to close off all the entrances, in fact it was looked into if they could be dynamited but apparently they wouldnt risk the adjacent field disappearing!!! Thais how much open space there is down there! Always up for a trip in – got some good lamps!! Regards the underground church – he says “there was a cave we all used to call the cathedral cave due to its size, this got blocked by a rock fall during the time he was exploring them! Who knows? Since going again recently he says the opening is still not there! He’s also said “the mouse hole had a few entrances, however there are several different passages that don’t adjoin to each other, like the cathedral cave, there’s no other way now of getting in their.” Seems to know them well! Will find out more, Ill be going down soon if anyone else is let me know if you don’t mind me joining U! Did you know there’s an underground lake under whiston hospital that stretches towards prescot? How do I know – Well I work for what used to be BICC cables, the site was massive back then (tesco stands there now) and there were two water pumps that pumped water from this lake through bore holes for cooling around the site – what is interesting is that fish were regularly found in the filters that had no eyes and were plain white in colour!! You can get down to it, am trying to find out how! its mark i’m back.  still have all maps for caves and intend to reopen them all again. i have swam in the lake, the mirrored walls are nothing more than a series of tunnels about two miles in which look exactly the same as each other ( but easy to get lost). Have been going down since i was 8 and i know the caves and tunnel systems like the back of my hand. The photograph below is thought to be from Victorian times and is said to depict the church which is said to exist somewhere in the cave system.